Panepinto criticizes mayor foe Demings
Flier claims sheriff ‘fails’ on school safety
Orange County mayoral hopeful Rob Panepinto hit rival candidate Jerry Demings with a political flier this week, criticizing the sheriff for his handling of a school-safety issue as Tuesday’s primary nears.
The two-sided campaign mailer, paid for by Vision Orange County, an organization with a link to Florida’s Republican Party, fans the flames of a political dispute that arose this month over a new state mandate to put a full-time law-enforcement officer in every school. One side of the mailer criticizes Demings, the other praises Panepinto, a Winter Park businessman.
The campaign mailer declares “Jerry Demings Fails Our Parents and Schools” and includes excerpts from Orlando Sentinel stories, which revealed not every elementary school in unincorporated Orange County would have an officer on campus when classes began Aug. 13. The mailer urges voters, “Tell Rob Panepinto the County needs him!”
Demings, Panepinto and Orange County Commissioner Pete Clarke are vying to replace term-limited Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs, who is running for School Board chair.
Demings described the mailer and a related robotext message as misleading political-attack ads.
“The issues related to the ‘school safety’ concerns were contrived for purely political reasons by a Republican group in support of Teresa Jacobs and Rob Panepinto,” Demings said in an email to the Orlando Sentinel. “The current school board chair, Bill Sublette, and Superintendent Barbara Jenkins have publicly verified that we mutually agreed on the [school-safety] plan and money was never the issue... Other large urban counties have the same challenges we have in staffing SRO’s [school resource officers] in schools.”
Sublette concurred with Demings.
“It’s never been about a lack of funding. It’s always been about hiring 75 additional deputies. They don’t grow on trees. We’re understanding of this. It’s a heavy lift for any sheriff ’s office,” he said.
Panepinto disputed Demings’ view that the issue was solely a political one.
“Jerry has throughout the campaign staked the reason he should be mayor on what he calls his ‘drama-free’ administrative skills,” Panepinto said. “From my perspective, with the most important current public safety issue we face, he hasn’t done the job. To me, that’s not a political issue.”
Demings and Jacobs feuded over the question of why there wasn’t adequate staffing to provide a full-time officer at every school in unincorporated areas.
“This issue was clearly a school district issue that I had been working on a solution with them for months and we had reached a tentative agreement before Jacobs’ memo to me. John Dowless is a Republican consultant involved with both campaigns and I am the only Democrat in the race,” Demings said. The mayoral contest is nonpartisan, meaning a candidate’s party affiliation is not listed on the ballot.
Dowless, president of Millennium Consulting who has worked on both Panepinto’s and Jacobs’ campaigns, said he’s had nothing to do with the school-safety issue.
“That is completely between the mayor and him,” Dowless said, referring to Demings.
Demings asked county commissioners this week for another $11.2 million to hire 75 more deputies to fill empty school-resource officer slots.
He defended his record and experience, which includes service as Orlando police chief, Orange County public safety director and a decade as sheriff.
If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote-getters will face off in a runoff Nov. 6.